Sunday, April 28, 2013

Reflections on Brazil 2013 Part 1 by Tina Erwin

    This is my second time returning to Brazil for one of my husband’s conferences.
         The airport, the international airport still only has one runway but they are making major changes to the interior amenities in the airport. This is good news because they will be hosting the World Cup in 2014 and the summer Olympics in 2016. It takes a tremendous amount of infrastructure to host those two events.
         Brazil is hosting two world-class events. Think about this in light of the following. Brazil is transitioning into a world-class country. Yet, there are those subtle things that keep them in the 3rd world country status.      
        Consider that they will be moving hundreds of thousands of people through that airport. Everyone has to use the elevators with their luggage. And it is these elevators that fascinate me. In every elevator in this airport, there is a woman who pushes the button for each floor. She sits in a chair in this tiny elevator and that chair takes up a full 33% of the elevator. These are tiny elevators, so that’s saying something. International travelers, jet lag weary from the night flight to Rio, find the presence of these women strangely curious. There is barely room for two people and two suitcases in that conveyance. I understand that these ladies need employment, but how hard can it be to push the buttons for floors one, two and three?????
         Drilling for oil offshore is managed by the boomtown that is Macae a growing city two hours north of Rio.
This is an extremely labor intensive business. It’s also massively stimulating to the economy.
It takes thousands of people to support that gallon/liter of gasoline in your tank. Think about it: you need, for several hundred oilrigs:
·      Pipe fits to link each 90’ length of pipe.
·      90’ lengths of pipe that will bring oil to the surface from over two miles down.
·      Companies that manufacture each 90’ long piece of pipe. To drill one oil well that is in 7,875 feet of water, plus another mile underground, so roughly 13,125 feet of pipe or 146, 90’ lengths of pipe. It’s like sucking oil from a 13,125’ straw. Every single pipe, pipe fitting and seal have to be perfect.
·      Every single oil rig has a constant turnover either every 28 days for workers outside of Brazil and every 14 days for Brazilian workers. There are two crews that constantly change hands.
·      Which means flights, hotels, infrastructure to handle it all.
·      Then there are the refinery ships, plus two crews as well that pull up to the wells and pump the oil onto the ships and then refine it right then and there and then bring it into port.
·      Then of course there are the helicopters that bring every single thing to the rig except pipe. They fly every day, bringing food, tools, replacement parts and crewmembers. So imagine the pilots, maintenance people, and maintenance facilities required to support all of those choppers. And if the weather is bad, they don’t fly, so everything backs up. It’s really a nightmare when that happens. (Brazil is a very tropical country, so it rains quite a bit!)
·      So when that happens, then the crews coming off the rig can’t fly home, so every single plane reservation, hotel reservation and driver to pick up the crewmember, have to be changed. Travel is a huge deal.
·      Tools, can you just imagine the replacement parts, tools, large and small that every single rig needs? They have to be manufactured, cataloged and stored.
·      Food, all those people on all those rigs have to eat four times a day because a rig never sleeps. Operations run 24 hours a day.
·      Food, transportation, helos, helo parts, pilots, cooks, crew members, hotels, housekeeping on the rig, inspectors, all are repeated and required for all of the hundreds of rigs off the coast of Brazil.
         And this scenario is repeated throughout the world. There are rigs off the coast of countries everywhere, all requiring all of this support to get that precious oil out of the ground. We are horrified when one drop of oil hits the water – and we should be. However, when you consider that there are literally thousands of oilrigs, drill ships and fuel tankers working day in and day out globally, the miracle is how few accidents there are. This is profoundly dangerous work and keeping oil out of the water and people out of harm’s way is an extremely tense operation. There is absolutely no room for error.
         And these rigs are not anchored to the sea floor. There is no way you can send an anchor a mile into the water. So they are managed by something called Dynamic positioning. The following two photographs are from the TransOcean training center. Lots and lots of training is required to do this astonishing job safely.

         If cars worldwide ceased needing fuel, we, human beings would still need oil for jet fuel, the plastic we make everything out of plus lubricating oil. There is, at this time, no current substitute for machinery/auto/and fine motor lubricating oil. Plastic, if enough of it was recycled, could make a dent in oil usage, but lubricating oil is a whole other situation.
         It is so expensive to drill in open ocean for oil that when the price per barrel slips even a bit under $100 a barrel, it becomes no longer financially feasible to drill for oil. Who knew?
         It costs most oil companies over $550,000 a day to drill for oil. That’s just the drilling cost. Add to this the cost of actually pumping it out of the ground – which is a separate cost, refining it at sea and then shipping it to a distribution site and then trucking it to each gas pump world wide and you begin to get some idea of why this proposition is so colossally expensive. Of course, once it gets there, some counties or states add taxes to the price per gallon.
         If you’re thinking we have to come up with a better way to power our western life style – that would be an understatement! It’s easy to hate the oil companies, even with all the costs, this is still a moneymaker, but costs are rising and technology is playing catch up. Consider that the cost of overhauling one oil rig, is $500,000,000, yep that’s no misprint, five hundred million dollars. Each new rig costs $750 million a rig. It takes your breath away!
      Part 2 Next week!

Sunday, April 21, 2013

A Very Difficult View by Tina Erwin


       The following story is one that will appear in a future ghost book, however, because there is so much controversy about this topic in the news these days, I thought perhaps that it would be helpful to share several views that appear in this story.
       So many times, people take sides, believing that their view is the only view, the only righteous viewpoint. But sometimes, there are so many important ways to look at something that there cannot simply be only one correct view.
       We all like to think that we control our future, that we have a say about what will happen to us, but sometimes, karma, for whatever reason, throws us a curve ball and a critical decision is required. For some, an agonizing decision.
When you read this story, when you approach this with an extremely open mind, perhaps you will come to know the torture of a dilemma that takes two people to create, but ends up ultimately being the responsibility of only one person. That one person has to make a life or death decision and that decision will echo out for better or worse for an eternity.
Perhaps you will still hold tight to your view after you read this. But perhaps, you will be a bit less judgmental in your perspective and a great deal more compassionate because most of the time, things are not exactly what they seem. Life is not always black and white.

That Terrible Feeling© 2012 by Tina Erwin  

“I’m So Bad, I’m so Bad, I’m So Bad, I’m so Bad . . . .
       My close friend Mary called complaining of a headache in the middle of her forehead. She said she felt an uneasy, heaviness surrounding her, and that she just didn’t feel well. This was very unusual for her because she always enjoys wonderful health.
       And it was precisely because she is always in such good health that the ‘heaviness’ didn’t feel normal. She said it felt as if there was a presence with her, something other-worldly. She would have felt self-conscious telling me this but by now, we had been friends long enough that telling me she felt like there were multiple ghosts with her was not that unusual. This is an exceptionally psychic lady. She was wondering what this could be and asked if I could help her.
       I remote viewed my friend’s house, and in this particular case she and I were both pretty astonished with what we found. My friend could sense what she thought were only a few ghosts, but what tipped her off was her pounding headache, almost as if it was someone or perhaps a group of people pressuring her. 
       Usually when you have that kind of ghostly spiritual pressure, the energy can manifest in physical symptoms of either: nausea, lethargy, headache or all three. Fortunately, she only had a headache, but she did not want it to become anything greater. I told her I would take a look.
      
“Who Are All These Women?”
       Once I started to work, I could readily see and feel this astonishing scene. It took me a few minutes to sort out exactly what I was seeing. It looked pretty toxic.
       It looked as if I had stumbled upon an opening to a very dark place. How can I describe what that looked like? How does one convey the sheer volume of emotion that I could see?
       When you work in these realms, you can see the emotion that surrounds a person. That emotion can be dark, looking sooty and dirty. It can be depressed and look flat and gray. Some emotion is rage filled and does look extremely red and angry. In this case, we saw what looked like thousands of women in a state of severe depression, women who hated themselves. The colors that surrounded them ranged from gray, to black sooty swirls, to flashes of angry, red electricity.
       Who are all these women, I asked myself.  I knew I needed to figure out why they are here.
       Sometimes to help a soul or a group of souls, you have to learn why the specific group of souls in front of you has been presented to you and how you can help them. Not all souls require the same type of assistance. Some souls want you to listen to their story. Some want forgiveness, which is not up to me to provide. Forgiveness has to come from within a person but if a person feels that what she has done cannot be forgiven, she will literally send herself to hell to be punished. My job is to ask for assistance from the Heaven World on their behalf. Other souls want you to tell them what to do or to help them to understand where they are. These souls in this particularly terrible place needed more than just directions, they needed the very essence of compassion itself.
       It appeared to me that this was a unique group of souls with similar issues. I could see some women weeping, some screaming, some were rocking back and forth, muttering to themselves. I had no idea who these women were or why I was seeing them, but I knew I had to offer all of them immediate assistance.
       When a soul is in a terrible state of deep depression or self-hatred, it is necessary to facilitate an energetic frequency elevation so that the soul can begin to make that transition to the Heaven World. The issue is that when a soul is in tremendous despair there is a huge frequency disparity between where they are and where he or she needs to be to cross over. At least some part of them has to heal enough to make the transition. Usually, the presence of an angel readily facilitates this process, which usually takes a few minutes.
       As the Angels of Transition began to assemble, I watched the women recoil in horror as the angels began to approach them. I was bewildered as it appeared as if the presence of the angel was more of a torture, than an assistance. I realized that obviously, I was missing something huge.

“I Wanted to Keep Her, I Wanted to Hold Her”
       I decided that I needed to hear their stories, so I began to approach several women and gently encouraged each to tell us her story.    
       The first woman I approached was sitting in dirty, bloody clothes. Her hands were bloody too, although it seemed that her hands were symbolically bloody as if they represented the energy of her action more than anything else. She would not tell me her name. I had to gently encourage her to share her sadness. I repeatedly assured her that I would not judge her; that I was genuinely here to help her without any prejudice whatsoever.
        The energy of the angel standing by her, glowing brightly in this chilling place, was the only hopeful element present. Perhaps it was the angel’s presence that gave her enough positive energy to begin to open up with her story.
       “I’m so bad, I’m so bad, I am so bad.” This was all she would say at first as she sat there in her red stained clothes, her arms wrapped around her thin, black stocking, covered legs, just rocking back and forth, back and forth. She behaved almost as if she were in some type of unending catatonic trance.
       I reassured her that whatever it was, that I could help. I also explained that if she were not worthy of help, then I couldn’t be there. After a few minutes she began to slowly speak, almost as if she was choking on each tortuous word.
       “I don’t – exactly --- know --- how it - it happened. One day (she sighs heavily here) I realized I was pregnant and I knew that I was going to be damned forever. The church says that being pregnant out of wedlock is a sin against God. The priest said that I am forever dammed to hell. I see that angel, but the priest says that God cannot love or ever forgive me. I am a sinner, a sinner. What’ve I done to my child? What’ve I done?”
       Her sobs opened my compassionate heart to her. What a terrible sentence her church had imposed upon her! I could not tell exactly what era of time she was from, but from the look of her clothes, I guessed she had lived sometime about 150 – 200 years ago. I encouraged this poor soul to continue.
       “Tell me, what happened to your baby? Did you get to keep her?”
       Again, she rocked and cried for a while before she could continue speaking. I asked the angel to place a healing blanket on her shoulders.
       “I wanted to keep her! I did! I wanted to hold her, at least once, to feel her sweet skin against my face. I wanted to kiss her pretty little fingers. I longed to rock her and comfort her when she cried. I didn’t care that God had damned me. I wanted her so much; I loved my little girl. She had such a sweet face. . .” At this point her sobs would have surely broken the heart of the hardest person.
       I let her regain her ability to speak, knowing that simply sharing her story was healing in its own way. Sometimes you have to get the darkness out and her torture was a lethal dose of guilt.
       “The priest in the village said that I could not keep my child because it was a crime against God. So immediately after she was born, the midwife showed her to me and took my baby from me. I never saw her again. Pretty soon, a barren woman in a nearby village ‘had a baby.’ I knew that was my baby. This woman was barren because she should never have had children. This ‘new mother’ was cruel to my little girl. My child had a terrible life with her. I heard the gossip about her and my baby. It was all my fault. I should have found a way to care for her. I should never have let them take her from me, but I was only fourteen and my father didn’t want another child, he didn’t want his child around reminding him of what he did to me.”
       I took a deep breath. Incest was and still is so common. However, it didn’t matter to this woman, she loved the life growing inside of her but the circumstances of her life precluded her from ever parenting this child.
       About this time, another woman spoke up.
       “They done took my little baby boy from me and give him up to an orphanage. My family didn’t want me to shame um with no bastard child runnin’ around. After daddy found out I was pregnant he done beat me so hard. He called me a slut an’ a whore but it t’were my brother who done this to me! How was I gonna tell them? I weren’t allowed to visit my son in the orphanage either or my daddy woulda’ beat me even harder. I cried every day for what seemed forever. I never got to see him again.”
       A new voice penetrated the darkness. The courage of the other women must have empowered her to tell us about her painful situation.
       “When the priest found out I was pregnant, he kept me out of sight in the convent when I began to show. I had a big belly. Once my adorable baby boy was born, I overheard the priest tell the Mother Superior to take my son outside, kill it and bury it. How can a priest who got me pregnant order someone else to kill his own baby? The priest said that God wanted the baby dead to punish me for my sin of being a woman. I wish they had killed me too.”
       More and more women began to tell us their stories. We could hear their cries. The darkness, rage and the sooty atmosphere was their grief, their guilt and their self-hatred.
       “Despite the women’s movement, the freedom we thought we had in the sixties, once I got pregnant, that ‘freedom’ went out the window. My boyfriend told me that he wouldn’t marry me if I had our baby and he insisted that I get an abortion. He said that when we were married, and had more money that we could have a baby. He said it was just a bunch of cells anyway.
       The day of the abortion, he went to the clinic with me and helped me through the ‘procedure.’ He was totally elated when the ‘procedure’ was over. He told me that now we could plan our wedding. I threw up. I had murdered my baby and he was elated. We broke up and I never saw him again. I have considered myself a murderer all of my life. I don’t deserve any angel you send to me.”
       “Well, if I had been able to have an abortion, at least I wouldn’t have had to watch as my child was given to someone who didn’t love her.”
       Yet another woman spoke up.
       “I was twelve when the stranger abducted and raped me. I didn’t know what sex was but I got pregnant anyway. I didn’t want that nasty life in my body – the child of a rapist! I was glad for the abortion when my parents put me through it. But the rest of my life I felt so confused. After all of that, I never even wanted to be with a man or even think about having children.”
       “I was raped at 22 and I had his black baby. I tried to raise the child. I did. I did everything I could think of to try to love this little boy, but no matter what I did, when I looked at him with all that kinky hair, I saw the man who raped me. Finally, when he was three, I gave him up for adoption to a bi-racial couple that wanted him very much. I hoped he was happy. I still feel terrible about this. I should have had an abortion rather than having him and giving him up. Which was worse? I am eternally tortured by what happened to me and to this child.”
       “My son got his girlfriend pregnant  - twice! and he insisted she abort both babies – and she did. He’s a doctor! She’s a nurse! How can people who are supposedly dedicated to doing no harm do this? They are married, and have two kids now. But when I see them I feel that I can still see the other two children standing there. They haunt me. I should have taken them. I should have talked my son and his wife out of aborting those babies. I deserve to be punished. I know why I’m here.”
       “I had ten abortions before I finally got married and had my two sons. Hell is where I belong.”
       “I got pregnant by the Earl himself. I was his chambermaid and one day he just ‘took’ me. I had his bastard child, which he of course denied. But I loved this child. Finally I had someone in my life to love.
       The Earl was furious that I kept his child and he banished me from his manor house. He made sure that no one else would ever hire me. It took me a long time to find a place where I could live with my child and make a living. Finally, the vicar in a nearby village took pity on me and hired me to be his housekeeper. At least now I had a roof over our heads but life was hard for my son. Everyone called him a bastard. I felt horrible for putting him through that. If I could, looking back on it, I wish I could have had a way of ending the pregnancy rather than put him through a lifetime of torture.”
       Quietly, the angels began placing healing blankets around the trembling shoulders of each woman.
       And the stories continued from all different time periods and various stacks of time including modern times. I was quietly taking it all in, sending them love and compassion. When enough of them had finished, they all were finally in a place where I could speak to them.
“I want you all to understand that you are each very much worthy of God’s love, that no one is ever in any position to judge you. It is my sincerest hope, that you can all feel the profound compassion overflowing from my heart. I am sending you all my love, and I wish I could hug every single one of you.
Sometimes we cannot know exactly why something like this happens. However, this moment, as we are all together I am offering you the healing of the Light of Compassion, the Light of Christ Consciousness and the hope that you can heal, that the love you have had for the children in each of your situations was not in vain, did not go unnoticed. Let no one judge you. I am offering you the hope that someday you will be able to cease judgment of yourselves. Perhaps in time, you will be able to forgive yourselves.”
The agony of each of their positions was staggering. I wanted to comfort each of them individually, to hug them. But I knew that only the true comfort of the angels and the transition to the Heaven World, would allow these women to begin to heal. My job was simply to assist them in their transition – and to hear their stories without judgment or prejudice.
       I also explained that once they each crossed over with their angelic escorts, that there would be Divine Beings there who would help them understand the life just lived. The angels nodded to me that they were ready to escort these women to the other side when I gave the word.
       The scene before me slowly but surely began to brighten as healing began to penetrate the very soul of each woman.
       I watched as one by one, the warmth of the divine blankets allowed the women to stop crying, and to begin to stop punishing themselves. One by one the angels compassionately guided each woman into the light until the scene closed and they were all gone. It was my sincerest hope that eventually once they were on the other side they would each be able to be reunited with their children.

Epilogue
       Mary’s headache left once I had finished assisting these souls. I found it such a revelation to be a witness to the spiritual and emotional burden that women of all ages have suffered over the centuries, with an unwanted pregnancy. Their guilt and grief was so tremendous that it lowered their soul frequency to a point that they could not cross over without help. I felt honored that I was able to assist them. I still have no idea how many women were helped that day. I suspected that it could have been thousands since I could not adequately count the women I could see. Also, once the angels appear, there is a great deal of chaotic energy between the angelic divine energy and that of the tortured souls. Eventually, with sharing their stories, healing blankets and the basic fact that they were each receiving attention, they were finally able to make that miraculous transition to the Heaven World. I always find hope in the gentleness, the tenderness and relief that the angels bring to each soul. Doing this work is extremely humbling.  

******
       I found myself impressed by Mary’s deep sense of empathy and her dedication to the service of assisting all of these women once I told her what had happened, and what was causing her headache. Mary is a tremendously compassionate person. Her kindness is based on the fact that she had experienced numerous miscarriages, and had lost a child due to a terrible illness. Perhaps because of these experiences, she was especially vulnerable to the plight of other women and they literally sought her out for help. We may never fully know for sure. However, her compassionate effort to help whoever was there was the most important element of her service.
       ********
       Sometimes, you simply don’t know the entire story.

Monday, April 15, 2013

KS&: 397 The Service of Distributed Power Part 3: Translating The Crossing Over Prayer© by Tina Erwin


        The other morning I was struck by an incredible idea: what if we were to translate The Crossing Over Prayer© into every language we could?
         What if we could distribute this wonderful power to all the peoples of the world?
         Death is not proud, selective, sensitive or elite.
         Death, that inevitable spiritual opportunity, will come to all of us in some way or other.
         Death, that bringer of peace or pain, depending on your point of view, will visit every family at some point in time.
         And Death will welcome millions and millions of bewildered souls into a whole new world.
         Karma, the handmaiden of Death will help each of us decide what will happen when we leave our body and enter this strange, often chillingly, scary world of life after death. For some it will be brief, but others will languish there for an 
interminable length of time.
         Free Will, the last vestige of mortal/soul opportunity will help us to decide where we will venture next. Will we find that light of the divine and cross into the Heaven World, or will we stand bewildered in the darkness of disbelief and/or guilt and languish for a very long time as a misunderstood ghost/apparition/spirit?
         The Crossing Over Prayer© is perhaps one of the very last tools that a mortal person can use to help a loved one to find that light of the Divine, no matter how that person died, regardless of their belief system or lack of thereof or their level of guilt.
         Please help me if you can to translate this prayer into every language on the planet. Please help as many souls as possible to heal.
         Translating is not as easy as it sounds. I could merely use Google Translate or iTranslate but I am looking for a human being who truly knows and loves their language and who is willing to put their heart into the translation. Few things are literal translations. However, if you would be willing to work with me, we can get this translated.
         You will also receive credit for doing this. Helping with this translation carries with it a certain amount of karma. What this means is that every single time a person finds the TinaErwin.com site and uses The Crossing Over Prayer© in that language, a certain amount of what is called ‘distributed karma’ attaches. This means that a percentage of the wonderful energy of the prayer comes back to the translator. Everyone benefits. If you wish to translate this prayer and remain anonymous, that is also fine otherwise, I will list your name and location – with my profound gratitude. Please feel free to share this with other friends and family members. As translations come in, they will be added as ‘buttons’ on TinaErwin.com
         Here are the languages I currently have translated:
       Arabic
       Farsi
       Hebrew
       Italian
       Spanish
       Turkish
        
These are the languages I need translations for The Crossing Over Prayer©. If you are interested in translating this prayer, please contact me at Tina@TinaErwin.com
. . . . . and thank you with all my heart!

Bengali
Bulgarian
Cambodian
Cantonese
Chinese
Czech
Dutch
Finish
French
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Galic
German
Japanese
Javanese
Korean
Kurdish
Laotian
Latvian
Maylay/Indonesian
Mandarin
Navajo
Nepali
Norwegian
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Samoli
Serbo-Croatian
Swahilli
Swedish
Swiss German
Swiss French
Swiss Italian
Tagalog
Tamil
Thai
Tibetan
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
VietNamese
Wu
Zulu

The Crossing Over Prayer©

by Tina Erwin

The following prayer is an excerpt from the book series, Ghost Stories from the Ghosts’ Point of View, and is designed to help you help any ghost to cross over into the Heaven World.  If you see or sense that you are being haunted, you can say this prayer with conviction to send them to where they need to go.
The Prayer:  Sending Ghosts to the Heaven World
  Dearest Lord Above,
I humbly request that you take
any and all souls, who have found
my divine light of service, into
the Heaven World, right now.
I ask that an angel wrap each
soul in a blanket of healing light,
right now.
I pray that every single soul
will use the Light Bridge provided
by my Angelic Team, to transition into the
Heaven World, right now.
I send love and healing to all souls
no matter how they died, no matter
their level of guilt, without any judgment
or prejudice whatsoever, right now.
May the light of your love, Father,
embrace and keep all of these souls
now and forever.
Amen.

    
    

Sunday, April 7, 2013

KS&L 396 The Delight in LIfe: the Joy of Innocence by Tina Erwin


       I have two granddaughters and I consider myself an extremely fortunate person. These two little girls light our lives and are adored by everyone who encounters them. I find that looking at each of their charming faces, listening to their voices affects me in such an astonishing way that I cannot help but smile. The cares and woes of the world seem to melt away, and the light of their innocence embraces me.
       One of my sons called recently and said, “Hey Mom, guess what? Angie can say grandma now!”  So he turns to her and says, “Angie, say hello to grandma.” And she does, she says ‘grandma’ in that charming, heart-melting 22-month-old voice that lights up your heart. I find when I talk to her that my voice changes, that my smile is permanently fixed on my face and I sigh when the conversation ends.
       I remarked to my older son how delightful it is to see Katie smile, how this also lights my heart. His response: “Yeah, her smiles are great, but wait to you hear baby giggles! They’re the best!” And he’s right, there is nothing like hearing a six-month old baby giggle in complete, utterly trusting glee at something that is unfathomably funny.
       I have watched waitresses who are taking our order with these children sitting with us, just smile, involuntarily, as if he or should could not help themselves. Look at the face of innocence and something inside you lights up, as if you can see something beyond the features of an emerging personality, a baby or toddler face.
       Why do we react that way? It’s easy to understand why I am in love with my granddaughters. I can see the hope of tomorrow for our families in their faces. I can see the beauty of my children and their spouses in their features and the mere sight of it is glorious. I’m the grandmother; you’d expect that. What if there is something more to it?
       I suspect that even strangers who don’t particularly like children respond on an almost primeval basis. It’s the same reason we cannot resist watching kittens and puppies. The ‘cute’ factor is often over the top. Face it, you can’t watch a litter of kittens exploring their world, romping in the new experience of green grass and not stop for a minute, transfixed, transported from the cares of your day to just enjoying the innocence of being a carefree kitten.
       The energy of smiles, laughter and simple fun help us to cope. This is why people keep photographs of their kids, family members and pets around their home, on the office desks and on the smart phones and computer screens. As I write this, I’m flying Southwest to visit my youngest son, his wife and Angie! As I was walking down the jetway in Atlanta, there on a console just as you board the plane was an open part of the section and there pasted all over it were pictures of the person’s adorable dog. Every single person I could see, who walked by that console looked at that dog. I watched them smile, then look down for a moment and then refocus on boarding. When we are reminded of love and laughter, we are automatically lifted up and out of ourselves. That energy of delight opens the door to hope and gives us a break from our stress and worry. 
       Facebook seems primarily about people proudly chatting about their kids, their pets and cute and funny sayings, things that are not heavy or too difficult. There’s already too much of that. People want an escape from stress.
       Sometimes the best gifts are the surprising ones of happy moments with the ones we love and cherish. When we are away from them, all we have left are the echoes of their voices and laughter. Perhaps that is the best collection of all, the memories of children’s laughter and baby giggles!